Baker Artist Portfolios

"The nucleus of my practice is objects based on materials and process that I create around social and/or aesthetic ideas. Sometimes this results in narrative installations; other times, consideration of a component’s relationship with similar objects and the environment is required. Philosophically and socially, I make work questioning what “art” and “fine art” are and who gets to decide."

Sheila Crider is an independent intuitive artist with work in many public and private collections.
After receiving a BA from the University of VA, Sheila returned home to Washington, DC where she became a founding member of Free DC: The Writers’ Workshop led by AB Spellman. Working as an artists’ model, she began researching and experimenting with language in 1980, publishing The Use of Language as Art in 1981 and Art as Language in 1984. She also wrote and produced staged readings: Soliloquy by the Bona Fide Adam’s Rib-type Woman, Eve (1982); shi & him (with Samuel Johnson, 1985); Learning, The Hard Way (1989); The Adventures of Ms. Mondiale (1992) and Putting the Word Out: Blackstraction (2000- 2006).
Living in Bordeaux, France from 1985 - 1991, her focus shifted from words to visual language. In 1999, she apprenticed for three months with Sumi-e ink master Kohei Takagaki in Aioi, Japan and participated in a week-long workshop learning traditional paper making at the Mino Washi Paper Museum in Mino. She has been artist-in-residence in Paducah, KY (2017), at the Stone Quarry Hill Art Park in Cazenovia, NY (2011), Leighton Studios at the Banff Center in Alberta, Canada (2006), The Vermont Studio Center (2001), and Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris (1997).
In 2022, she relocated her practice from Washington, DC to nearby Baltimore, Maryland where she continues to research and exhibit.